Understanding trompe-l'œil as a more metaphysical than pictorial exercise – as Jean Baudrillard does –, Alisa Sibirskaya (Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, 1989) uses photography to create scenes and worlds that emulate different periods in the history of painting to reflect on the present through the formal and thematic languages of the past.
Conceived as a revision of the pictorial and moral creeds of the past, Belleza furtiva (Furtive beauty) presents a dialogue with tradition that aims to question, with the genre of vanitas as its main thread, the vacuousness of discourses that sought to convince us of the futility of earthly pleasures as we are faced with the inevitability of death.
If the vanitas style showed still lifes of decaying fruit, flowers and animals to illustrate the ephemeral nature of earthly pleasures, Sibirskaya updates this theme to explore present-day material culture, which is exacerbated by the widespread absence of meaning related to our transcendence.
The exhibition has been curated by Natàlia Chocarro, art adviser to the presidency at Fundació Vila Casas, as part of the “Punts de fuga” (Vanishing points) programme, which seeks promote the artists in our collection by creating new exhibitions that will be installed throughout our country and internationally.